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// C.O.N.T.A.C.T. Instant Messenger
// Story: Arrow 18 Mission Logs: Lone Ranger
// by AdmiralTigerclaw
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C.O.N.T.A.C.T. Instant Messenger
Conversation Log: July 10th, 2258
* Ernest Hart (EGSA Engineering) has made contact
* Dan Hawking (EGSA Operations) has made contact
Conversation is being recorded.
Ernest: Hey, Dan. You there?
Dan: Greetings!
- What can do do for you?
Ernest: It's about secure file 'Nightcrawler'.
Dan: What about it?
Ernest: Is it authentic?
Dan: The file? Yeah, as far as I know it's authentic.
Ernest: Open it up for me real quick then. I have to show you something.
Dan: I have a meeting with Bobby in ten minutes. Can this wait?
Ernest: This might just make the cornerstone of your meeting, so... No.
Dan: Okay, I have Nightcrawler open. What do you want to show me?
Ernest: Take a look at O-scope data point one, at the 24 second mark.
Dan: Okay... got it.
- What am I looking for?
Ernest: Look at that waveform. Are you seeing what I'm seeing.
Dan: I don't know ernest. What am I supposed to be seeing?
Ernest: Okay... I forget you're not engineering sometimes. My bad.
- At 24s, and 480ms, you see that wave? The one that looks like a sideways S-bump?
Dan: I see it.
Ernest: That's not normal. That's a positive AND negative voltage curve occurring at the exact same time.
- There's only one other natural electromagnetic signature known that does that. Displacement flux.
Dan: Wait... Displacement flux? Are you sure?
Ernest: Yeah, I'm pretty sure. When you use a displacement drive, there's some simultaneous stretching and squeezing of spacetime involved. Usually that produces small electromagnetic waves in the UHF band. One wave from the stretching produces a negative voltage flux. Another from the squeezing produces a positive voltage flux.
Dan: Shouldn't that cancel them out?
Ernest: The waves are out of phase by a few pico-seconds. One occurs at the departure point, the other occurs at the destination point. When they hit the o-scope, they arrive slightly apart. Think of it as digging a hole. In order to dig a hole, you invariably have to create a small mound of dirt next to it.
- We call them 'digger-waves' and they're unique to displacement drive flux.
- I thought I was seeing things at first, but I checked every recorded instance of this 'teleport'.
- Every single time it occurs the o-scope picks up the digger-wave.
Dan: So what you're saying is that the teleport isn't a teleport, but a subspace displacement hop?
Ernest: Well, yes and no. As far as we're concerned, the mechanics of a subspace displacement drive is effectively teleportation occurring 64,000 times a second. But very simply put, the creature being catalogued in this file is a living subspace displacement drive.
Dan: Is that even possible?
Ernest: Nobody said it wasn't. If you have a means to curve space, the amount of curvature depends on what energy you have available. A ship like the Arrow covers 22,000 miles in a single pulse of the SDD. Theoretically, a creature can do the same at much smaller distances.
Dan: Here's a question then. Could a subspace displacement affect things other than point to point travel?
Ernest: Like what?
Dan: Like moving external objects, levitation and that kind of thing.
Ernest: Well... if you can sustain the curvature in a small enough area, it could create a pseudo-gravity well strong enough to overcome natural gravity. Then all you do is move that point, and the object merely 'falls' into it.
- Unlike teleportation though, the precision needed for such a thing is like the difference between a human's ability to walk while remaining balanced, and teaching that to an early robot.
- So far, we've only managed to succeed at hurling bobble-head dolls across the room at half the speed of sound. That wasn't pretty.
Dan: But it's possible?
Ernest: Theoretically, yes. But it's not easy.
Dan: How large can you scale something like that?
Ernest: How much energy do you have?
Dan: I see...
* Bobby Brookshire (EGSA Operations) has made contact.
Bobby: Okay Dan, I'm here. What's so important that we're pushing this meeting back?
Dan: Ernest, tell Bobby what you just told me.
Ernest: Which part?
Dan: The whole thing, but shorter.
Ernest: Oh boy...
- Well, I was going over the data from secure file Nightcrawler when I ran into digger-waves on the o-scope readings.
Bobby: Digger wave?
Ernest: The telltale signature of a subspace displacement. It's all over the o-scope recording. All instances of this creature, Twilight Sparkle, 'teleporting', give off a digger-wave.
Bobby: Are you saying she's displacing rather than teleporting?
Ernest: More like displacing and teleporting are the same thing, but yeah.
Dan: Ernest also said that levitation might use the same mechanic, but with more precision.
Bobby: Really? Scalable?
Ernest: If you've got energy, you can move it.
Bobby: Ernest, I want you at our meeting. Dan, can he be in this meeting?
Dan: Ernest, drop what you're doing and meet us in room 403 in five minutes.
Ernest: You realize I'm four miles away in the assembly building, right?
Dan: Oh... yeah. Well, get to room 403 in the main complex ASAP. I think you're on to something.
Ernest: Nice. Consider me there.
* Dan Hawking (EGSA Operations) has suspended contact
* Bobby Brookshire (EGSA Operations) has suspended contact
* Ernest Hart (EGSA Engineering) has suspended contact
*Sub note:
3750 ly = 22 quadrillion miles. (To be precise: 22,044,845,779,681,532)
6 months = ~15,552,000 seconds
Thus Arrow travels 1,417,492,655.5 miles a second.
OR: 7,609.4 times C
Divided by 64 kHz SDD cycles = 22,148 miles per pulse.